objective

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• adjective Existing independent of or external to the mind; actual or real.
• adjective Based on observable phenomena; empirical.
• adjective Uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices: synonym: fair.
• adjective Medicine Relating to or being an indicator of disease, such as a physical sign, laboratory test, or x-ray that can be observed or verified by someone other than the person being evaluated.
• adjective Of, relating to, or being the case of a noun or pronoun that serves as the object of a verb.
• adjective Of or relating to a noun or pronoun used in this case.
• noun Something worked toward or striven for; a goal. synonym: intention.
• noun A thing or group of things existing independent of the mind.
• noun The objective case.
• noun A noun or pronoun in the objective case.
• noun The primary optical element, such as a lens or mirror, in a microscope, camera, telescope, or other optical instrument, that first receives light rays from the object and forms the image.

from The Century Dictionary.

• In grammar:
• Noting the ease expressing the subject of the intransitive verb.
• In Eskimo gram., noting the thing possessed. Also intransitive (which see).
• As perceived or thought; intentional; ideal; representative; phenomenal: opposed to subjective or formal—that is, as in its own nature.
• Pertaining or due to the real object of cognition; real: opposed to subjective (pertaining or due to the subject of cognition, namely, the mind).
• Substantive; self-existent.
• Intent, as a person, upon external objects of thought, whether things or persons, and not watching one's self and one's ways, nor attending to one's own sensations; setting forth, as a writing or work of art, external facts or imaginations of such matters as they exist or are supposed to exist, without drawing attention to the author's emotions, reflections, and personality.
• In grammar, pertaining to or noting the object of a transitive verb, or of a preposition; forming or expressing a grammatical object: as, the objective case; an objective phrase or clause. Abbreviated obj.
• noun In Eng. gram., the objective case; the case used to express the object of a verb or a preposition.
• noun An objective point; especially, the object, point, or place to or toward which a military force is directing its march or its operations.
• noun The lens, or practically the combination of lenses, which forms the object-glass of an optical instrument, more particularly of the microscope (see object-glass).

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (Gram.) The objective case.
• noun An object glass; called also objective lens. See under Object, n.
• noun Same as Objective point, under Objective, a.
• adjective Of or pertaining to an object.
• adjective (Metaph.) Of or pertaining to an object; contained in, or having the nature or position of, an object; outward; external; extrinsic; -- an epithet applied to whatever is exterior to the mind, or which is simply an object of thought or feeling, as opposed to being related to thoughts of feelings, and opposed to subjective.
• adjective Unbiased; unprejudiced; fair; uninfluenced by personal feelings or personal interests; considering only the facts of a situation unrelated to the observer; -- of judgments, opinions, evaluations, conclusions, reasoning processes.
• adjective (Gram.) Pertaining to, or designating, the case which follows a transitive verb or a preposition, being that case in which the direct object of the verb is placed. See Accusative, n.
• adjective (Perspective) a line drawn on the geometrical plane which is represented or sought to be represented.
• adjective (Perspective) any plane in the horizontal plane that is represented.
• adjective the point or result to which the operations of an army are directed. By extension, the point or purpose to which anything, as a journey or an argument, is directed.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• adjective Of or relating to a material object, actual existence or reality.
• adjective Not influenced by the emotions or prejudices.
• adjective Based on observed facts.
• adjective grammar Of, or relating to a noun or pronoun used as the object of a verb.
• noun A material object that physically exists.
• noun A goal that is striven for.
• noun grammar The objective case; a noun or pronoun in that case.
• noun The lens or lenses of a camera, microscope, or other optical device closest to the object being examined.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• adjective undistorted by emotion or personal bias; based on observable phenomena
• adjective emphasizing or expressing things as perceived without distortion of personal feelings, insertion of fictional matter, or interpretation
• noun the goal intended to be attained (and which is believed to be attainable)
• adjective belonging to immediate experience of actual things or events
• adjective serving as or indicating the object of a verb or of certain prepositions and used for certain other purposes
• noun the lens or system of lenses in a telescope or microscope that is nearest the object being viewed